126 RINDERPEST. 



however, to the brief consideration of the agencies by which 

 fermentation is arrested. 



These are embraced in a long catalogue known as anti- 

 septics, of which we may mention the most important; to 

 wit, boiling water, alcohol, salt, an excess of sugar, the mer- 

 curial salts, nitrate of silver, volatile oils ; the mineral, pyro- 

 ligneous, sulphurous and carbolic acids. 



" Alcohol and common salt, in certain proportions, check also all 

 putrefaction, and consequently all processes of fermentation ; because 

 by these means the putrefying body is deprived of a certain condition 

 of its decomposition, namely, the presence of a certain quantity of 

 water." 



The action of these antiseptics, in arresting yeast ferment, 

 and also the putrefactive process in animal substances, is of 

 the highest interest in the pathology and treatment of zymotic 

 disease, and will readily furnish to the enthusiastic student of 

 medicine most valuable suggestions. His aim in their appli- 

 cations in medical and veterinary practice, will be to select 

 such as will produce the least disturbance, transient or per- 

 manent, on the vital force. We will only add, that from the 

 similarity of the action, while in the state of propagation, of 

 yeast and morbid poisons, and the identity of the means by 

 which it may be arrested, that it is not improbable that yeast 

 may exert a curative action in the Pest ; though even such 

 probability requires that more numerous trials should be suc- 

 cessfully instituted than those previously noted. 



The old school <rf medicine has long since exhausted its 

 ingenuity in the use of mercurial salts and the like, in the 

 treatment of epidemics, and has passed from the general use of 

 the mineral acids ; and the present school rejoices in the dis- 

 covery of the eflScacy of those last named in our list, to wit, 

 sulphurous and carbolic acids. 



This brings us to the consideration of two of the most 

 valuable antiseptic remedies; which are embraced in our 

 third division of specific agencies. 



The farmer has long been familiar with the fact, that if he 

 burns a little sulphur in a barrel which has been rinsed out 

 with water, and confines the fumes produced, so that they are 



